In the printing or coating of beverage cans, it is conventional to carry the cans away from a printer or coater on a "pin-chain" conveyor and transport them through many festoons of the pin-chain conveyor within a dryer chamber. The so-called pin oven is expensive because of its excessive size and the operational and maintenance problems which arise out of the movement of a lengthy section of the pin-chain conveyor through the pin oven. The cost of the pin-oven equipment increases as an exponential function with increase in conveyor speed. At production rates exceeding six hundred cans per minute, the pin ovens are generally impractical in size and cost. However, coating and printing technology has developed to the extent that equipment is available for coating and printing at rates up to 1,000 cans per minute. As such equipment includes pin conveyors which ordinarily continue their travel through a curing oven, the potential utilization of such equipment is severely limited because of the impracticability of curing the coated or printed cans while on a pin conveyor at rates above 600 cans per minute.
As objects of the invention, it is desirable (1) to provide machinery for regrouping flat-end cylindrical articles entering a transfer region in single file procession while standing on one of the respective ends into a multiple-row succession of articles standing on respective ends while proceeding away from the transfer region; (2) to provide a conveyor system for regrouping flat-end articles of uniform length which are coated with an uncured or tacky material without allowing the articles to touch each other; (3) to provide machinery of a "breakthrough" type which combines the production advantages of a pin conveyor handling with wide-belt curing and heating equipment; and (4) to provide a can handling system which will receive cans or other hollow articles having an open end and uniform length from a pin type conveyor and redistribute the cans on a much wider flat belt conveyor, without allowing the exterior surfaces of the cans to contact each other, in order to achieve the curing capacities of flat belt ovens.